


Glory Box

by celinamarniss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubcon because sex pollen, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Holocrons Made Us Do It, Jedi Artifact Expeditions, Sex Pollen, and other flimsy excuses to spend time together, light retconning and timeline squishing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-23 22:49:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10728891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamarniss/pseuds/celinamarniss
Summary: Mara is hired to help Luke search for a lost holocron in the ruins of an ancient Jedi settlement on a quiet, Mid-Rim planet.It doesn't go as she expected.





	1. Chapter 1

“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” 

Mara pulled her head out of the access panel in the side of the _Jade's Fire,_ where she’d been trying to readjust a loose fuel line, and blinked up at Luke Skywalker, leaning casually against the side of her ship and into her personal space. She’d barely had time to register his presence before she found herself pulled into a hug that she returned stiffly.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, her brow furrowing as she looked him over. He was wearing a causal civilian outfit instead of his Jedi robes, though his lightsaber, as ever, was clipped to his belt. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she was wearing a faded flight suit and was currently streaked in engine grease.

The side of his mouth quirked up into a crooked smile. “What, no ‘hello, it’s nice to see you again, Luke’?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on Yavin?”

“It’s nice to see you too, Mara.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Can’t I just visit a friend?” he teased her.

She continued to glower at him, even if inwardly she reflected that it _was_ nice to see him again. If he was spending a few days on planet then maybe they could make time for a sparring session. It had been a while since she’d had a chance to practice with anything that wasn’t a remote.

“I caught a ride to Coruscant to visit Han and Leia and kids. I haven’t seen them for a while, since they don’t get out to Yavin often because of Leia’s work,” he said. Her gaze had already drifted back to the hatch she’d been working on. “And I was hoping to catch you before you left.”

“Why?” She gave him a curious glance before reaching back into the hatch.

“I wanted to hire you—if you’re interested.” He passed her the slip joint pliers she’d dropped onto a nearby toolbox.

“I already have job, Skywalker,” she said as she used the pliers to tighten a loose washer on a fuel line.

“Oh, okay, I thought I’d caught you between runs.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw his face fall.

He _had_ caught her between runs, and irritatingly, in a lull between her last assignment and the next. Mara had meant to use the time to file some paperwork, schedule a few meetings for the Smuggler’s Alliance, and perhaps catch a performance or two at the Opera. She already had responsibilities.

“What’s the job?”

He brightened, the look of disappointment slipping away as he launched into his pitch. “I recently got some info on a deserted Jedi settlement on a Mid-Rim planet, and if those Jedi left any datacards or holocrons behind, they could be useful at the Praxeum.”

“You could lease a ship from the NR. Why do you need my help?”

“It’s on a planet called Iponu. I thought it was pretty obscure, but Han told me once that you had connections there. He thought you’d be the best person to help me out.”

 _“Solo,”_ she muttered under her breath. “Yeah, I’ve been.” She made a few minor adjustments and then started to seal up the panel again. “What exactly do you want me for?”

“Well, there’s your connections, and besides passage to the planet, I was thinking that you could help me locate the settlement and search it for artifacts. I’d pay for your time, of course. Whatever price you think is right.”

She noncommittal hum as she carefully packed up her tools. It could be a nice change of pace, and a _paid_ change of pace…

“She’s a beautiful ship,” he said, running his hand along the _Fire’s_ side, his eyes following her sleek lines.

Mara couldn’t help but feel warmed by his compliment, a fond smile crossing her face as she looked over her ship. “I had a brush with some pirates—idiots weren’t paying attention to the Smuggler’s Alliance signal—and the sensor array was damaged, so I had it replaced on Corellia, a full hardware upgrade, top of the line—” He was staring at her, a slight smile on his face. “What?”

“Your face lights up when you talk about your ship.”

“Oh.” Mara could only blink at him, nonplussed.

He flashed her one of his sun-bright smiles. He seemed lighter, somehow, without the tense edge she’d noticed that last time she’d seen him at the Academy. More carefree than he'd been in… years.

“What happened to the pirates?”

She felt her own smile take on a sharper edge. “They were very apologetic when they figured out who I was. They paid for the new sensor array.”

Luke laughed. “That was very generous of them.”

Mara shrugged a shoulder. “Send me the details on this mission of yours. I need a couple of days to wrap up my business on Coruscant, and then I’ll see if I can make the time for a trip to Iponu. But—” she glanced at her chrono. “I’ve got a meeting I’ve got to get to tonight. I’ll comm you tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” he said, flashing her another too-friendly smile as he headed out of the docking bay. “See you soon, Captain Jade.”

\- -

“A contract?” Luke stared at the datapad she’d placed on the table in front of him.

“It’s a standard contract that outlines what you’ve hired me to do and covers the terms and conditions—” She cut off at the face he made. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” he said as he began to scan the file. “I guess I just thought of this as an informal thing, you know, between friends.”

She gave him a long look that told him exactly what she thought of _that_ comment. “You’re paying me for a job, Skywalker,” she said slowly, though she were talking to a child. An exceptionally stupid child. “Money is changing hands, and a contract keeps all duties and responsibilities above-board. I’m a legitimate trader these days, you know.” Well. The fact that she retained ties to Karrde’s not so legitimate organization was an open secret she wasn’t going to discuss with him. “You’re not just catching a ride with Solo.”

The contract covered the standard terms for chartering a ship, and what provisions were covered by the fee Luke had paid. There was a section that wasn’t standard, regarding the specifics of this particular expedition. Although she’d agreed to help with handling any of the Jedi artifacts they were removing from the site, she’d made sure the contract stipulated that she wasn’t required to intervene in any Jedi-related _incidents._

Although she had years of training, she’d never graduated from his Jedi school (in spite of retaining ties there as well) and since she wasn’t technically a Jedi herself, she wasn’t obligated to get involved in any Jedi nonsense, which seemed to follow Luke wherever he went.

This time, she wouldn’t have to get involved. It was there, in writing.

“Anyway, you’re getting a discount. You don’t even want to know what Karrde can charge for this sort of thing.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better.”

“We can call this whole thing off if—”

“I don’t mind, Mara,” he said, waving a hand, head still bent over the contract. “Besides, I’ve already stowed my luggage.”

She’d settled him in one the _Fire’s_ guest rooms and now they were seated in the ship’s  comfortably furnished lounge, on the generous couch that curved around a table, one of the benefits of owning a modified luxury yacht. There was a small ship’s kitchen off of the lounge that had been outfitted with gleaming top-of-the-line equipment when it had been built. As Luke signed the forms, Mara stepped into the kitchen and returned with a pair mugs.

He brightened as she placed the mug in front of him, irritatingly pleased. "You have hot chocolate? For me?"

"I know how to keep clients happy. You're a client."

His face fell a little at her brush-off. He lifted the drink and took a sip, his eyes lifting as he looked at her over the rip of the cup, giving her a look that…was. absolutely. calculated.

Was he _flirting_ with her? _Luke?_ Mara didn't know what to do with that.

She’d ignore it then.

She picked up her own mug—caf, she wasn’t a peasant like Skywalker—and went over the information he’d given her on the Iponu Jedi settlement. The files had been compiled by an archaeological team that had surveyed the ruins left behind when the Iponu Jedi had disappeared nearly 150 years ago, either dying off or abandoning the settlement—the team wasn’t sure.

These Jedi had been a separatist sect, one that had broken away from the Jedi Order centuries before its downfall. Luke had added an annotation on other sects that had done the same and had managed to survive on their own, and in some cases, such as the Zeison Sha or the Dathomir witches, even outlive the Jedi. This one hadn’t, but entire generations had lived on the site before it had been abandoned.

Most of the archaeological analysis on the datapad concerned the daily life of the community based on household items left behind in the abandoned settlement. None of it pertained to any of the spiritual activities of the Jedi, and Mara wondered what had drawn Luke to this particular site. There didn’t seem to be much left that would be useful to the Academy.

When she asked he selected a particular datachip, plugged it into a holoprojector and a holo of the ruins sprung to life over the table. He navigated through the holographic map, pulling up a particular room. It was an office, or—she reconsidered, noticing the equipment that lined the walls—a laboratory, though she couldn’t tell what purpose the equipment served.

“See, there?” He pointed to a desk near the center of the room. “I think that’s a holocron.” She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there was a small cube sitting on the desk that more or less resembled the Jedi holocrons she’d seen before.

“That’s what we’re looking for?”

“Yes. According to the reports, there wasn’t anything useful on any of the remaining recording devices left behind, but I’d like to take a look and see if they missed anything. No one on the survey team was a Jedi, and they obviously couldn’t work the holocron so it was left behind.”

“The files say the ruins are sealed,” Mara said, and Luke nodded. She was aware of how close he’d shifted to her, leaning over to look at the datapad she was still skimming. “When we drop out of hyperspace I’ll comm ahead see about getting an appointment with whoever’s in charge of granting permission to visit historic sites and get us clearance.” Karrde’s organization practically owned all the trade that came in and out of Iponu and she was sure that she could call in favors. A surprised, grateful expression crossed his face. “All services provided in my contract,” she reminded him. Mara took pride in doing whatever she did well, even if ferrying Jedi Masters about the galaxy wasn’t her usual order of business.

The ship chimed, the signal that their scheduled time to depart Coruscant had arrived and they were clear to leave, and Mara excused herself and headed to the cockpit. Luke rose from his seat and followed her, and for a split second she considered objecting to his intention to tag along, but she knew his interest was simply the genuine curiosity of a fellow pilot who wanted to see her ship in action. She decided she didn’t mind as long as he kept out of the way and allowed her to fly her ship.

That, she did _very_ well.

She settled in the captain’s seat, offering him a jumpseat behind her. He watched intently as she ran through all the take-off procedures, beyond routine at this point. She’d long lost track of the number of times she’d flown in and out of Coruscant, but she still took pleasure in guiding her ship out of the traffic-logged city planet and up into the atmosphere, feeling the tug as the ship broke free of the planet’s orbit.

“Beautiful flying, Mara.” She could hear the smile in his voice.  

She felt warmth flow through her at the compliment. “Thanks,” she said simply as she ran through the steps for their leap to hyperspace. She hadn’t completely shielded her reaction and she knew he’d picked up on it, and she knew she’d react too strongly if she turned and looked at the affection on his face.

When she’d eased the ship into hyperspace they returned to the lounge, and Mara ducked into the kitchen again to put together a simple meal for their dinner. _Not_ part of the contract, but Karrde had taught her that basic hospitality was part of her job as captain of a chartered ship. Luke was going over the archaeological team’s files again when she returned and passed him a bowl of noodles and a pair of chopsticks.

He had a crooked smile on his face, as though she'd done something that amused him. "Not ration bars?"

"I stocked up on food and packaged goods on Coruscant. Why? Did you want one?"

He shook his head, still grinning to himself. "Han likes to say that you live off ration bars and rage."

Mara rolled her eyes. "Solo thinks he's hilarious.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever cooked for me before. I’m honored,” he said, giving her a smirk that was full of suggestion.

He was definitely flirting with her.

She diverted, cocking her head at him. “Is an obsession with how food is served a desert planet thing?”

Luke shrugged. “Of course food has meaning on Tatooine. Though it depends on where you were raised, and if your family is free or not. A bowl of noodles offered like this, well… ” He looked down at his bowl thoughtfully, as though considering the specific weight of the meaning of the meal. “...don’t worry, I won’t hold you to your proposal of marriage.”

She looked at him blankly. _That didn’t sound right…_

“I’m kidding, Mara.”

“You and Solo both. You’re not that funny.”

He just seemed amused by her lack of reaction and refusal to play along. Now he was smiling at her again; he’d been doing that a lot recently.

She thought about asking about the Jedi Praxeum in order to change the subject but knew that it would just give him the opening he needed to nag her about finishing her training and she didn’t want to bring it up. She had what she needed for now, and it was enough. Maybe some day, when her other commitments weren’t as pressing.

She still stopped by the Praxeum occasionally, running in supplies and sometimes staying long enough for a few practice sessions to sharpen her skills. She heard all the gossip from Corran and Kirana Ti, such as it was. Things seemed to be running smoothly these days, in spite of the Academy’s rocky start. The last time she’d passed through it struck her that there were new faces everywhere, eager young trainees filling the hallways and classrooms.

Luke had been so busy he hadn’t had time for more than a brief chat when they’d bumped into each other in a hallway. She’d sensed his disappointment mirroring hers when they both realized that neither had the time for even a single sparring session while she was on Yavin. She was busy too; she was always busy.

They had time now. Mara laid out the schedule for the days they would spend in hyperspace together in order to ensure that they had a few slots of time set aside to practice. He seemed pleased and more than willing to spend time sparring with her, though she emphasized that he wasn’t obligated to do so.

“Not in the contract?” he teased.

“No, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind.” And there wasn’t much else to do in hyperspace. She assumed he’d spend the rest of the time meditating or whatever, and he could leave her out on that count.

“I’m happy to spar with you, Mara.” It didn’t _quite_ sound like an innuendo; Luke was too sincere for that. If he’s been Solo, it would have, and she wouldn’t have stood for it.

She moved on quickly. “I had part of the hold converted into a training room. It’s a better space than what I had to make do with on the _Wild Karrde._ ”

The conversation turned to the _Karrde_ and its crew; Luke and asked after the crewmembers he’d met. Back on more innocuous ground, Mara was reminded of how much she simply enjoyed his presence, how easy it was to talk with him. He asked after her business and listened attentively to her gripe about the trials of the intergalactic shipping business. Then the conversation drifted back to the friends they had in common.

“How are you and Lando these days?” he asked.

Mara had a blank moment, then frantically tried to recall where she and Lando were in the timeline of their fictional romance. “Off-again.”

There was a part of her that regretted the subterfuge; it was hard to lie directly to Luke’s face, even if he was polite enough not to ask any further details. Her romantic life had never been any of his business before, but he was a friend, and he’d never been dishonest with her. She made a mental note to speak to Karrde when she got back to Coruscant. The counterfeit on-again-off-again relationship had served its purpose in several missions that she and Lando had carried out for Karrde, but it was a con that had was starting to become a nuisance at this point, and it was time to end it for good.

“I’d heard that,” Luke said. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound remotely sorry. The look on his face implied the exact opposite.

He was pushing again, against the lines she’d firmly drawn between their friendship. Mara leaned back and eyed him carefully over the rim of her mug. He held her gaze, a subtle tension running through him that she could just barely sense through the Force.

She felt herself flush and all the moments when she’d found him attractive over the past years pushed to the front of her mind, out of the corners where she’d stubbornly shoved them. She couldn’t deny that she still felt that pull, and he was clearly willing. Would it really be such a bad idea to sleep with Luke?

She mentally shook herself. Yes, yes it would. It would be a stupid, sloppy move to screw the Luke, and Mara Jade didn't do sloppy. She was here to do a job, and kriffing the _head of the Jedi Order_ , who was a friend and ally, wasn’t in the parameters. She had a contract!

She stood. “I’m going to my quarters.” She picked up her datapad; she could study for a few hours before she slept. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She picked up a pang of disappointment from him, but he didn’t give voice to it.

“Good night, Mara.”

\- -

Iponu was a colony world located in an obscure corner of the Mid-Rim that had never attracted much attention. The original colonists on Iponu had been human, and though the planet was mainly populated by Iktotchi now, the mix of species and cultures in the capital city of Isiru where they landed meant that a pair of humans wouldn’t stand out.

Luke had mentioned that the Iktotchi had a susceptibility to Force sensitivity, though it tended to be stronger in the Iktotchi that remained on their native planet than among colonist populations, for whatever reason. They weren’t unfriendly people, but they kept to themselves. Iponu was currently thriving, but it never made any moves to establish itself as a galactic power.

Mara wondered if that was due to an over-enthusiasm for local bureaucracy, since the docking procedures were as complicated as any she’d encountered. They had to be cleared by a customs officer, who had to inspect their ship in person, and so on. It was tedious, but dealing with these sort of complications was why Luke had hired her.

The customs officer was human, and young, which hopefully meant that she could intimidate him into speeding things along. He’d been consulting a datapad when Mara and Luke stepped off the _Fire_ , and when they approached he looked up at them, and then down at the datapad and then up again. His mouth dropped open.

 _Great._ He’d recognized Skywalker and now they’d have to deal with a starstruck—

“M-Mara Jade? _The_ Mara Jade?” He rushed forward, shaking her hand. “It’s an honor, an _honor._ My family survived the Second Wave because of you. We haven’t forgotten what you did for us.”

 _…Oh_.

“Um, thanks…” She looked at his nametag. “Nakishi. Can you clear my ship?”

“Oh, of course, Captain Jade. Right away.”

He rushed by Luke without a second glance. Luke raised his eyebrows at her.

“There was a plague on Iponu,” Mara began. “It was in the planet profile.”

“I remember. A strain of the Corellian X-35 virus.” It was a virulent cross-species strain, that had been known to devastate entire planets.

“The Imperials were blockading the entire system at the time—some former Moff’s petty power grab—and no one was willing to run the blockade. So we did.”

“Karrde supplied the planet?” She could tell he was impressed.

“It wasn’t as altruistic as it sounds. Karrde ended up with a monopoly on their trading interests.” And apparently, a whole planet in his—thier—debt.

“But you saved thousands of lives.”

“Yeah, I guess we did.” Mara shifted her shoulders, glancing away. She’d just been doing her job; all this fuss was… unnecessary.

They caught a hovertaxi to the city’s center of government and entered the building that served as the city’s hub of bureaucracy. The news of their arrival had clearly traveled ahead of them, judging by the way conversation died as they passed, the locals openly staring and whispering as soon as they were out of earshot. Mara had assumed her previous work on the planet would make establishing contacts easier, but she never expected it to come with celebrity.  

“This wasn’t in the contract,” she muttered, glowering at no one in particular. So much of what she’d done for during the Thrawn campaign and other crises New Republic had been classified, and she’d always worked under the radar. The attention was unsettling.

A few bolder residents accosted them along the way to offer her thanks for saving themselves or a beloved family member, and Mara managed to offer something moderately gracious sounding in return. She found the entire process excruciating.

“There are benefits,” Luke murmured. He placed his hand on her shoulder—a guiding gesture which made her muscles tense fractionally—and then slid his hand down to rest lightly in the small of her back, thumb brushing along her waist. Intimate. He trying to provoke her again, and Mara wouldn’t rise to the bait. Especially not with everyone watching.

He continued, obnoxiously cheerful. “You didn’t even have to bribe anyone! _I_ feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.”

She glared at him. “We’ll have to jump through more hoops to to get approval to take artifacts from an archeological site,” she reminded him.

To that objective, she’d scheduled time to visit the offices of local bureaucrats to fill out the appropriate forms and bribe the right officials to obtain clearance to visit the ruins. She’d been surprised when she’d been given an appointment with the governor of the city himself, but at the time she figured it was something to do with Karrde’s trading connections. It made more sense now.

The Governor of the Iponu was a large and friendly Iktotchi with horns curving around a jovial face, who met them in the hall outside his office, obviously having been made aware of their presence. His advisor, another Iktotchi, hovered obsequiously at his elbow.

Large hands clasped hers and shook enthusiastically. “Captain Jade! We were so _pleased_ when we heard that you would be visiting Iponu. So pleased! Have you been taken care of?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Wonderful! If you need anything, anything at all, you only have to ask! That goes for your companion too, of course.”

Now he could finally get his moment. “This is Luke Skywalker,” she introduced him and waited for the awe to spread across the governor’s face.

It didn’t happen. “Oh, ah, yes, yes. You’re the Jedi interested the ruins. Skywalker, was it?”

 _“Luke_ Skywalker,” Luke prompted them.

“Well, we’re pleased to have you, too. Now, come this way…”

Still not a glimmer of recognition from either of them. Maybe they’d figured Skywalker for a common human name or a common Jedi title and hadn’t connected it back to the Luke Skywalker, famous slayer of death stars and emperors, leader of the mysterious and hallowed Jedi order. Mara had heard the stories that trickled out to the far reaches of the Outer Rim, distorted and overblown despite the propaganda holos and press releases the New Republic sent throughout the galaxy. Somehow they hadn’t made much of an impression here.

She glanced at Luke and caught him trying to wrestle back a mixture of surprise and guilt-tinged disappointment, and had to cover a smile. He shot her a quick, sour look that their hosts missed completely, and just served to increase Mara’s amusement.

“Cut it out,” he muttered to her.

“Are you going to be _okay?_ ” This said with heavily feigned concern.

 _“Yes,”_ he bit back. “It’s just unusual and it took me by surprise. That’s _all_.”

She shot a smug grin at him. “That was fun.”

He glared back at her, more exasperated at her glee than anything else. Their Iktotchi hosts, who must not have had a lick of Force sensitivity between them, completely missed the exchange as they led Mara and Luke down the hall into the Governor’s office.

“We just have a few forms for you to sign,” he was saying. “The ruins are a protected religious site, but we’ve expedited the paperwork. The least we could do for you, Captain Jade, the very least.”

Mara lifted the datapad and began to scan the forms. There was always a disgusting amount of paperwork when you had to engage directly with a government agency. It made her miss smuggling. In this case she was happy to use whatever leverage her otherwise inconvenient fame would give her to bypass the red tape.

The Governor had continued his babble: “We’ve had a few archeologists check out the site who had, erm, unusual experiences—”

"They're Jedi,” his assistant murmured. “They're celibate."

"No, that's not—" Mara started. "I don't see what that has to do with it."

"Ah! Of course, _Jedi!_ You should be able to handle anything! Please sign here and have your companion sign these sections.” They signed and were subjected to an excruciating round of small talk before they could excuse themselves.

“The settlement’s still abandoned, is that right?” she asked. And on the other side of the planet, far away from the overly-grateful citizenry.

“Yes, of course, the ruins are still sealed, and our regulations are very strict…”

She couldn’t _wait._

\- -

Another benefit of her unexpected fame became obvious when they checked into their hotel and found that their rooms had been upgraded to a spacious suite with a wide lounge, two bedrooms, lavish bathrooms, and a balcony. It was highly unlikely that surveillance devices were hidden in the rooms, but Mara scanned and searched for them anyway out of habit.

Luke tossed his luggage into the room with the smaller bed and wandered over to a spread of refreshments laid out on a table in the main room. A holoprojector was set into the end of the table, and he turned it on and skimmed through the holos that flickered to life in the air above the device. They were mostly promotional come-ons for various sights and businesses as well as a schedule of local events and entertainment.

Luke paused at one invitation. “There’s a banquet tonight at the local opera house. We could ‘mingle with the upper echelons of Iponu society.’”

She gave him look that said what she thought of _that_ idea.

He grinned. “I’m sure they’d be thrilled to have the _famous_ Mara Jade attend.”

“You’re not paying me enough for that, Skywalker.”

He chuckled. “If we had to fight our way out of a Hutt’s den you wouldn’t complain, but put in a public appearance…”

“You don’t even want to go!” she scoffed.

He affected a careless shrug. “It would be a change of pace, a chance to get dressed up…”

“They don’t let you out of that Academy very often, do they Farmboy?”

To her surprise, the jibe hit harder than she expected. Something in his face closed down, and he looked away. It occurred to her that he hadn’t pestered her about joining the Academy and finishing her training nearly as much as she expected. Whatever drama was going down among the Jedi, it wasn’t any of her business. She was just here for the job.

She finished her sweep and joined him on the couch, sifting through the spread of delicacies on the table. It would serve for dinner, and they wouldn’t have to go out and be gawked at. She had more sympathy for his and Leia’s status as celebrities than she’d ever had before. As they ate in companionable silence, her thoughts turned toward Luke, and his clear interest in… her.

She wouldn’t screw anyone in Karrde’s crew _(that_ would be _sloppy)_ but she wasn’t… opposed… to using sex to blow off steam (although that was also an impulse that felt like it belong to who she’d been _before)_ , it was just that Luke was… complicated.

There had been moments when they had been sparring on her ship during their trip to Iponu that she’d felt a connection between them, the Force flowing through their movement and through the dance that linked them, briefly, in the space of a lightsaber duel. She’d felt that before. Even though they saw each other irregularly he knew her better than anyone did, she reflected, perhaps with the exception of Karrde, and her relationship with Luke was nothing like her relationship with Karrde.

In her experience, sex had so often been about power and manipulation, and she couldn’t see how Luke fit into that equation, or perhaps, _didn’t want_ to see him there. She had a feeling that sex with him wouldn’t be like _that,_ an instinct she didn’t want to examine too closely.

It was too close, too _messy_. She didn’t need that in her life. She had everything under control. It was important to have that clear in her mind, to understand precisely where she'd drawn the line between them.

He must have picked up on her mental state somewhat. “Are you okay?” he asked. She could sense him hovering at the edge of her awareness; It felt like an invitation, as bold as if he’d run a finger down her spine. What was lurking under that Jedi Master calm? He was tempting, and _Kriff,_ she was curious…

“I’m fine. Just tired. I think I’ll turn in early.” She rose and headed to her room, feeling his eyes still on her.

“Mara,” he called as she stepped into her suite. “Is there anything I can do for you?” It wasn’t even a come-on, just pure farm boy sincerity.

“No,” she said. “There isn’t.”

Mara shut the door.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The ruins were on the far side of the continent from Isiru, but instead of renting a shuttle they were given permission to take the Jade’s Fire straight to the site, which frankly suited Mara just fine. She enjoyed watching the planet slip below the ship as they glided across the length of the planet’s only continent, the city giving way to forests and small towns. In the distance, another city glinted on the horizon and then disappeared below the curve of the planet, then a mountain range gave way to vast plains.

A plateau rose up from the plain and Mara flew the ship toward the base of the plateau, where the settlement had been tucked up against the sheer cliff. She landed the _Fire_ a short distance from the block of abandoned buildings.

As she rose out of her seat, she adjusted her holster belt over the loose, long-sleeved tunic she wore, light enough for the warm, dry weather on the plains where the settlement was located. There wasn’t any reason to believe she’d need her her weapons—the ruins were abandoned and sealed, and there weren’t any reports of dangerous wildlife in this part of the continent—but it wasn’t like Mara to go anywhere unarmed, and Luke’s missions had a habit of taking a turn for the unexpected and dangerous.

Mara guessed that the settlement had been built out of some ancient prefabricated material and smoothed over with a finishing that protected it from centuries of weather. The sun had bleached any color out of the plain walls, leaving them a dull dun color, and there was something about the structure that reminded her of Tatooine’s baked clay buildings, which rose in a single mass, with doors and sealed windows that indicated multiples dwellings within.

It was quiet, except for the sound of the ship behind them and the rustle of a light breeze across the grass. A golden winged insect flitted across the path in front of them and disappeared into the brush again, but they saw no other signs of life.

Towards the middle of the structure there was a wide door that was clearly used as the main entryway in and out of the settlement. The last team to explore the ruins had sealed the door with a lock fused over the original door’s locking system, but they’d left the code to open the lock in their files, which Luke used to open the door.

“The original locking system…” he mused, studying the door. “I think you would have had to’ve been a Force user to opened it. That’s interesting.”

“Is it?”

“Well, it suggests that some level of Force training was widespread enough in the community that they used it for things like door locks, which would have kept anyone else out of the settlement. I wonder if the Jedi Temple on Coruscant did the same.”

The door slid halfway open and then stopped, the ancient mechanism failing, but it left enough space for Luke and Mara to slip through. There was a small corridor beyond the door, dimly lit by the sunlight that came through the half-opened doorway, which branched off into multiple passageways.

They headed in the direction that the maps had indicated the lab with the holocron would be found, passing through a labyrinth of corridors and communal spaces, with sections leading into more private living quarters. Most of the spaces were still furnished, the long abandoned relics of the people who had lived there now gathering dust. Their glowrods illuminated geometric patterns painted on the walls in many of the rooms, a decorative style that had gone extinct with the settlers.

As they grew closer to the lab, they reached a large circular room bare of any furniture at all, with a ceiling made of some sort of transparent material, the afternoon sunlight shining through and illuminating the space. Here the shapes on the walls were painted in cool, soothing colors. Luke paced to the center of the space and turned slowly around in a circle.

“It’s a meditation room,” he said. “All the settlement’s Jedi gathered here to meditate together.”

She could sense his sadness seeping through his shields, a muted grief for what had been lost. It had been a beautiful room. But now it was faded and hollow, and would never be filled again with Jedi communing with the Force.

Down a short hall past the meditation room they found the lab, looking exactly as it had looked in the holos. It was lit only by the light seeping down the corridor from the meditation room, and it took a moment for Mara’s eyes to adjust to the relative darkness of the lab. A large desk stood near the center of the room, and dusty shelves and large banks of equipment lined the walls.

The holocron sat on the desk, glowing with a dim blue light. For a second, Mara thought that the light within the holocron pulsed momentarily when they stepped across the entryway, but dismissed it as a trick of the light.

Luke headed straight to the holocron as though it had a magnetic pull. It was slightly larger than the holocrons Mara had seen before, and crudely made, the metal frame that crisscrossed the glass sides of the cube lacked the elegance and artistry of the holocrons in Luke’s collection.

As Luke examined the holocron, Mara made a quick search of the room, the beam of her glowrod falling across the foor and walls. No files or datacards had been left behind, just lots of mysterious equipment that Mara couldn’t identify and was no longer operable anyway.

Luke was still leaning over the desk, staring at the holocron. “There’s an active program running,” he said, tilting his head as he examined the message cube. “Huh,” he breathed. “It’s broadcasting through the Force.” The glow of the holocron cast an eerie light over his face.

“Broadcasting what? A message or a directive?” her skin prickled as she picked up the ripple of— _intention_ radiating from the object.

“I’m not sure,” Luke said. “It doesn’t feel malicious.” She couldn’t sense anything malicious either, for whatever that was worth, and her danger sense was quiet. That didn’t mean she _liked_ it, though. If she concentrated, she could definitely feel it, whatever it was, like a hum in the air that was just barely audible.

He lifted his head and his eyes swept around the darkened room, across the shadows that clung to the corners. “I’m going to take it out into the light.”

Mara followed him back out into the sun-lit meditation room. It was warmer in the meditation room than it had been in the lab, and she was glad she’d left her jacket back in the ship.

Luke held the holocron up, his gaze fixed on it intently, and Mara could feel his powerful presence through the Force reaching out to engage with the holocron in his hands. It floated up and hovered in front of him, the blue light that shone from device pulsing brighter.

“There’s often a gatekeeper, a Jedi, who can guide us through the information they’ve placed in the holocron,” Luke explained. “They should—ah.”

The holo of a woman in plain robes appeared in front of Luke, the gatekeeper and, Mara assumed, the Jedi who had created the holocron and in whose lab they had found the device. The woman began to speak in a language or dialect that Mara didn’t recognise, and when she looked at Luke he shook his head. His eyes unfocused slightly, and Mara could feel him using the Force to pull meaning out of the women’s words. He licked his lower lip and she found herself fixed on the movement, her thoughts momentarily derailed until she wrenched her gaze away.

“She’s talking about a plague,” he translated. “That was killing the people here, she says, the community was dying out—that fits with our records… something about taking measures—” The image suddenly disappeared, reaching the end of the message or cut short by a programming glitch, Mara couldn’t tell. Luke made a frustrated sound.

She could feel him engaging with the holocron again, and after a few moments, holographic diagrams and writing bloomed out of the holocron and hovered in the air around them, layers and layers of information floating in the air. The information was either jumbled or organized by some method Mara couldn’t discern. She tried to make sense of the figures and scrolling text, some of it in a form of aurebesh so ancient she could barely read it.

“Is this...genetic data? Was she a doctor?” The information didn’t make much sense to Mara. She looked up from a table on midi-clorian counts, whatever they were, trying to catch Luke’s eye through the white-blue holographic diagrams. A genogram hung in the air between them, the lines of the chart partially obscuring his face. Her eyes flicked to his mouth again, and she forced herself to focus on the web of familial and genetic relationships instead of the curve of his lips.

“Reminds me of a zookeeper’s breeding chart.” As soon as the thought left her mouth Mara regretted it. The comparison felt unsettling, somehow. More than that, it was crude way to think of the community that had lived out their final days struggling to survive in this place; every name on that chart the final marker for someone who had ceased to exist. Luke glanced at her momentarily and then back at the chart, his expression unreadable. She could sense that he had his shields up too, keeping a tighter grip on his emotions than he usually did around her.

He raised a finger and let it rest beside a glowing symbol that repeated throughout the chart. “She was tracing Force-sensitivity through the community.”

Mara squinted a the symbol. “I didn’t know you could do that.” She shifted. She felt slightly keyed up, restless and struggling to concentrate on the information in front of her.

“Well, it’ll be interesting to study when we get back to the Academy,” Luke said with a sigh. “Tionne will love this, and Cighal.” He focused his attention back on the small cube itself hovering in the air in front of him. “There’s still another… level, hidden in the holocron, underneath the data. I think it’s the source of that program that’s running in the background. I’d like to figure out what it is.” He made a gesture with his hand and the holos vanished. She watched as he sunk deeper into the Force, his gaze distant and unfocused, communing with the object in a way she simply couldn’t comprehend. The gatekeeper flickered on again for a moment, mid-speech, before disappearing again, and Luke sighed again. “The data’s so old. It’s pretty corrupted.”

Mara shifted her weight again as she watched him study the artifact. Was it getting warmer in there?

“I think… I think it needs more than one Jedi to open it,” he said slowly, as though still working it through. “We need to link to it through the Force. Link to it together.”

Mara raised an eyebrow. “Will that really work?” Whatever he’d been doing with the holocron to open each level of information was a far more sophisticated Force technique then her training had covered, and she didn’t have his finesse anyway. He looked over at her, and some emotion moved quickly across his face and was subdued before she could work out what it was.

“I can show you how. Give it a try?”

Mara sighed, nodded, reached into the Force and towards the glow of his presence, bright and welcoming. It had been a while since she’d touched minds like this, but Luke pulled her in effortlessly, weaving the link together with ease in spite of her inexperience and drawing her toward the holocron. Together, they connected to the holocron, to the strange, Force-fueled semi-sentience enclosed in a glass and metal frame.

The nearly subliminal hum suddenly intensified, as though the Force were vibrating through them. Mara shuddered as it rushed through her, leaving her skin hot and tingling and an urge building within her, leaving her flushed and—

Her head snapped up, looking up at Luke. He was staring back at her with pure _need_ written across his features. She took two steps forward, yanked his head down and their mouths met, needy and sloppy and it was both better than she expected and somehow made everything worse. She couldn’t restrain herself; the holocron was sending the compulsion boring into her entire body, overwhelming any self-control. Somewhere there was a part of her mind reeling with a horror she could barely hear over the Force swirling in her head. She distantly registered the sound of the holocron hitting the ground and skittering across the floor.  

“M—Mara,” Luke gasped, breaking away and staggering back. His hands were shaking and she saw a glint of something in his eyes, something afraid, as though he could think _through_ _this_ —but still couldn’t hold back.

Mara was beyond thinking. A wave of lust washed over her and she let herself drown in it.

She was on him again in a second, kissing and nipping at his mouth while simultaneously attempting—unsuccessfully—to pull his shirt over his shoulders. It might have been easier if he didn’t have his hands up her shirt, pushing up her bra to stroke her breasts. She was distracted from wrestling with his clothing when his fingers brushed across her nipples, with a tentativeness that shouldn’t have affected her so strongly—but she was already strung tight as a wire and his touch sent shivers straight to her core, a needy moan leaping out of her mouth. 

She’d do anything to get his cock inside of her.

Her fingers flew to his belt, letting the strap and lightsaber fall to the floor with a crunch. He then managed—somehow—to remove her top and bra, and practically flung her holdout and holster belt across the room. Then his lips were at her breasts and Mara gave up struggling with his trousers in order to hold him there. At the wet warmth of his mouth and the hint of teeth her toes were curling in her boots. 

He licked across her collarbone and then his mouth traveled up her neck—she shuddered as he sucked her earlobe into his mouth—and back to her lips, his hands skating up her back to dig into her hair. His fingers got caught in her braid and pulled hard, harder than he intended, and the bright burst of pain across her scalp made her _writhe,_ setting all her nerves alight. She barely noticed the flash of surprise across his face; couldn’t react to it, she was too busy sucking in a ragged breath at the pleasure shooting through her.

Then they were on the floor, pants and boots and underwear discarded in a rush before they reached the ground and she practically dragged him on top of her. His fingers were between her splayed legs, stroking and probing. “So kriffing wet,” she heard him mumble.  

“Just kriff—Just _fuck_ me—” she gasped. He pushed into her carefully, as though he still had some shred of conscious will in midst of the overwhelming urge to simply let loose and slam into her as she was babbling at him to do.

She whined, jerking her hips up in a needy movement. “Harder,” she growled, “ _Kriff_ —more,” digging her nails into his shoulders. She heard his sharp intake of air, and then he obeyed, driving into her in rough thrusts that made her scrape across the floor and spike higher and higher until she was right there—and she was overcome with an almost unbearable rush of pleasure, her entire body shaking, a long wail torn out of her. He came a few thrusts later, shouting and slumping into her, his breath hot on her neck.

The smell of sex and sweat and _Luke_ surrounded her. Even as she lay boneless beneath him, panting as aftershocks rippled through her, the haze of arousal faded just enough for a sliver of rational thinking to creep back in.

She felt her entire body tense, a response that Luke, still sprawled over her, couldn’t fail to miss. He made a small, distressed noise, slipping out of her as he lifted himself off of her and away, his head turned so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes. She rolled to her feet, scrambling around for her tunic, which she yanked on. It hung long enough to be barely decent.

She looked down at Luke. He’d sat back on his heels, looking dazed and still gulping deep breaths to steady himself. The sunlight slanting down through the ceiling lightened his hair and caught the sheen of sweat on his skin, making him look warm and golden. She could see the marks on his shoulders where she’d dug her nails into the skin.

She still wanted to fuck him, again, _and badly,_ but she could see past the overwhelming haze of lust now, enough to take stock of the situation. “What in kriffing hells just happened?” she said lowly.

“I—I don’t know,” Luke said, running shaking hands over his face. “Whatever it was… it affected both of us.”

“I _fucking_ know that,” Mara said, taking a few more steps away from him. It hadn’t stopped. She balled up her fists and pressed them to her thighs to keep herself from springing on him again. Her back hit the wall. Luke looked over at her, that open look of _want_ flickering across his features again, and then forced his head down, retrieved his pants and slid them on.

He stood, still avoiding looking at her directly and then sucking a breath. “The holocron—or—whatever it is. We triggered something when we linked to it…”

“Then turn it _off!”_ Mara hated how petulant she sounded, but she’d already lost any scrap of dignity at this point, hadn’t she? All her carefully constructed boundaries smeared away by kriffing Jedi sex magic.

He was already moving toward the holocron, which had skidded into a corner of the room. Mara watched as he lifted it up and examined it, the unfocused expression sliding across his face again. Minutes passed as Mara dug her nails into her hands, nearly shaking with the urge to fling herself across the room and take his cock into her mouth—

Luke made a frustrated noise. “I can’t—” he looked in her direction, and then tore his gaze away as quickly as possible. He growled, actually _growled,_ and stalked back toward the lab. Mara followed.

There was nothing in the desk or shelves of the laboratory that offered a clue as to what the holocron was doing to them, no matter how many times they scoured the room. The cube sat at the edge of the desk between them, glowing softly in the darkened space. The compulsion was beginning to build again.

 _“Fierfeck,”_ Luke hissed, and Mara started at the Huttese curse. “There’s nothing…I don’t know how to stop it.”

“This is _unacceptable,"_  she said as she slammed her hand down on the desk, pain shooting briefly through her wrist at the point of impact.

“It scares me too, Mara,” he said, laying his hand over hers. The second his hand touched hers she’d cleared the desk and wrapped her arms around him, her mouth meeting his desperately. There was a distant voice screaming in her head to stop, _this wasn’t her in control,_ and this time she listened, and _shoved,_ drawing on the Force to push him away. He slammed against the opposite wall.

They gaped at each other for several minutes.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“No, it’s not your fault,” she hugged her arms around herself as she perched on the edge of the desk, her eyes dropping to the floor.

“I won’t touch you again,” he said. “I keep trying to use the Force to clear my head, but whatever the holocron’s doing, it’s wrapped up in the Force and I can’t even think straight…”

He couldn't turn it off. She pushed down the fear and tried to pull herself back from the edge of panic. Her internal struggle didn’t escape his notice, and he sent a reassuring mental touch. Mara flinched.

“No, no, that’s worse.” She took deep breaths and fought to settle her racing heart again.

It wasn’t working. “I can’t—” she bit out as she ground the palms of her hands into her eyes. That primal urge, _that want,_ was building again, making it impossible to think of anything else except _him._

 _“Please—”_ the plea was wrenched from somewhere deep within her. He was across the room in a flash, dropping to his knees in front of the desk. She made some sort of inarticulate sound of approval, spreading for him, and he buried his face between her legs. She was still dripping from their earlier coupling, but he didn’t even pause, his tongue lapping up her folds and curling into her. It sent shivers through her, and she made absolutely mortifying high pitched sounds as she twisted her hands in his hair, rocking her hips into his face.

He tilted his head to look up at her as he slid his fingers into her, his eyes glinting up in dim light, blue rimmed irises nearly black with lust, lips parted and wet with her slick. It made something inside her wind impossibly tight. His tongue pressed against her clit and she wailed, head snapped back and body curving forward as she peaked, her toes curling and fingers fisting in his hair, and then she sagged, panting, hands gentling on his head.

He staggered to his feet and clung to her as she reached into his pants and took him in her hand. He was already so far gone that it only took a few strokes for him to come, his teeth sinking into her shoulder. The thought that she liked the warm weight of him in her arms skittered across her still dazed mind. 

“Sorry,” he murmured, kissing the mark he’d left on her shoulder.

“Mmh, it’s fine.” 

That compulsion had eased off just a bit more, enough so that Mara knew that she could control herself now. For a time. She wiped her hand on her splattered tunic as Luke leaned back again, zipping up his pants. He stepped away from her, deliberately placing space between them.

It was sinking in, as the haze of arousal faded a little further. She was sore and sticky and sated from having been thoroughly and enthusiastically fucked by Luke Skywalker. Again.

That _definitely_ hadn’t been in her contract.

She twisted and slid off of the desk, her bare feet slapping against the ground, turned away from him. She gripped the edge of the desk for a second, eyes closed, as she fought to center herself and push the arousal at bay again, just so that she could steady herself enough to walk away from him. She was sure he was doing the same, though she didn’t turn to look at him again. She left the room instead, heading back down the corridor to the meditation room, where she swiftly began to pick up her scattered clothing.

“I’m sorry Mara, I’m so—” He'd followed her into the room, and stood, watching her gather up her things. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” she cut him off. She moved around him to collect her holsters, refusing to look him in the eye. “Neither of us were in control when— _that.”_

“It was my fault. I brought us here and I activated the holocron.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “It’s your fault.” She yanked up her pants and then turned to pull on her boots. “It doesn’t matter. _Sorry_ doesn’t change anything. _Sorry_ isn’t stopping that—program.” They could both still feel the hum of it through the Force, quieter now, but still insistent.

She tried to concentrate on strapping on her holsters when all she wanted to think about was how kriffing _good_ sex with Luke had been. How much she wanted to do it again, now. _Now_ would be good… Karking _hell._ She _knew_ she’d get dragged into some kriffing Jedi weirdness, she just _knew it._

“We’re done with this place,” she said as she straightened, glaring across the room at him.

He opened his mouth, hesitated, and then nodded. “Let’s get back to the _Fire,_ ” he said.  

She was about to turn away when she realized he had the holocron in his hand. “I don’t want that _thing_ on my ship,” she spat.  

“Mara, we have to take it with us,” he said. “We need to figure out how it works so we can turn it off.”

There was a long moment in which she stared him down, fighting her repulsion of the device in his hand and a simultaneous urge to cross the room and kiss him again. “Fine,” she finally bit out.

She turned on her heel and stalked back to her ship.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Back at the _Fire,_ they both headed straight for their rooms.

Mara took a shower and tried, _tried,_ not to think about Luke doing the same on the other side of the ship. (It didn’t work. She leaned against the shower wall, shuddering as her inner muscles clamped around her fingers, her thumb pressed hard against her clit. She nearly split her lip biting back his name).

The compulsion had worn down to a raw edge that was persistent but not demanding; desire still itched under her skin, but she could contain it. For a time.

She couldn’t bear to face him again that night and decided that the best tactic to resist the simmering lust that still threatened to overwhelm her was to be unconscious, so she swallowed a few sleeping pills and climbed into her bed, but her sleep was restless, filled with arousal soaked dreams.

When she woke, she still wanted to fuck Luke.

Getting herself off with her fingers again helped bring down the urge to a reasonable level, dialed down to a suggestive hum rather than a compulsive drive. Another emotion welled up: she was _angry_. Angry that her self-control had been stripped away from her, angry at what it had forced her and Luke to do, angry that in spite of everything, it had been _so good_. Angry that she wanted it to happen again, and repeatedly. She clung to her anger, hoping it would help to drown out the surging lust.

She put it off as long as possible, but after several hours of struggling stubbornly through finance reports—catching herself reading the same paragraphs over and over, shifting constantly in her seat in an attempt to ignore the throb between her legs—she gave up and headed to the lounge. Luke was already there, staring at the holocron that sat in the center of the table.

As soon as she saw him she was seized with a longing to touch him again and she furiously stuffed it down, using her anger to push it away, to resist the compulsion that was still humming through her entire body. She suspected from the way his eyelashes fluttered as he blinked quickly up at her that he was doing the same. His eyes darted to her shoulder, where he’d left a mark, and he bit his lip even though he couldn’t see it through her shirt. She deliberately took a seat at the table furthest from the holocron. Furthest from Luke as well, as much as her body was demanding she cross that space and climb into his lap…

She didn’t bother with pleasantries; didn’t want to know if his sleep was as haunted by erotic dreams as hers had been. “Was bringing it here useful?” she snarled.

He winced at her tone, rubbing at his temple. “I’m… not sure. I’ve been studying it since—” he interrupted himself, started over: “I've been going through the accessible levels of information. There’s a lot there, though it’s disorganized and corrupted—”

She didn’t care about all that. “But you haven’t figured a way to turn it off.”

“No, I still haven’t figured out how to turn it off.”

He gestured to the holocron. “The Jedi who created this holocron was a geneticist. She was keeping track of the genetic compatibility of the members of the settlement.”

It _had_ been a breeding chart, and while it did make sense for a small, closed community to keep track of familial relationships so that no one ended up marrying a cousin that was too closely related, she was uneasy with the thought of where that obsession with genetics could lead.

“Are you saying she could have been using that—program—to influence genetic matches? Between Force users?”

“Her message was garbled, but she mentioned a plague. With the entire community dying out, she may have infused the holocron program with a sense of urgency toward...procreation…”

“So we’re playing out some sick eugenics program created by a crazy Jedi who died centuries ago."

"I'm not sure she was crazy. Single-minded, obsessive, but I don't know that we could consider her mentally ill. She was trying to save her people from a terrible fate.”

“By wiring them to kriff their brains out.”

“I’m not even sure that was the holocron’s original purpose. I think it might have corrupted over time. Perhaps her original intentions were warped as the holocron aged...”

“But it all comes down to the same thing.” It had apparently determined that she and Luke were a genetic match, a concept that Mara _really_ didn’t want to think too much about.

He nodded. “The governor mentioned that something affected the archaeological team, remember that? If any of the team members were Iktotchi, which seems likely, they might have been sensitive enough to feel the subliminal effects of the program, but since none of them were Jedi, they never fully activated it. It wasn’t targeting them. Whatever it identified in us when we linked with it, it initiated a—procreation compulsion through the Force…” he trailed off and then looked up at her sharply. “Are your repress meds are up to date?”

“Of course, aren’t yours?”

“Yes. But I wonder—the holocron affected us physically...”

Mara shook her head. “Impossible. We’re both on contraceptives, and they’re nearly foolproof…” She felt her stomach lurch, the word “nearly” hanging in the air between them. If the holocron had been meant to keep genetically compatible Jedi screwing each other until they reproduced, then—

“There are pills in the ship’s medkit.” Pills that would work even if the repress meds had failed. Even before she’d finished the sentence Mara was already out of her seat and searching the galley for the medkit. She found the pills and moved back to into the lounge as she tore through the package. Luke pressed a glass into her hands before she had time to ask.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

She swallowed the pill and stared blankly down at the glass. 

“No,” she said finally. “I don’t know.” She _would_ be okay, she would be _fine,_ what had happened on Iponu would just become another bizarre Skywalker-related incident that she could look back on one day.

Not one she would ever, _ever_ tell anyone.

“I guess at least we can be glad that it confirmed that I’m not another lost Skywalker.” The joke wasn’t remotely funny, and Mara was sorry she’d said it the moment it slipped out of her mouth.

“I knew that already,” Luke said softly, something regretful in his voice.

She reflected that what had happened in the settlement wouldn’t have gone differently if she’d accepted his advances earlier on, but it might have made things easier afterward if they'd already been lovers. Or maybe it wouldn’t. She wasn't sure if kriffing one of her closest friends in a Force-induced haze was better or worse than if she'd kriffed a stranger under the same circumstances. She trusted him more than almost anyone she knew, but she also knew that her relationship with him had been irrevocably changed without her consent. 

She glared at the holocron over his shoulder. He followed her gaze and sighed, turning back to the table. He braced his hands on the edge and stared down at the glowing blue cube, then lifted a hand and the holocron rose in the air. As it hovered Mara felt her stomach twist with revulsion as she considered the device that had taken control of her body against her will; was still filling her with unwanted desire that she was powerless to stop.

Luke’s face darkened and he pulled his fingers into a fist. The holocron _shattered_ , slivers of glass and metal flying in all directions and the innards of the device falling to the table in a mangled clump.

“Kriff!” Mara shouted in surprise. “What the hell, Skywalker?”

He blinked up at her. “Sorry, I should have warned you.”

“Why the hell did you blow that thing up?”

“Mara, it was using the Force to control you. I know what that means to you.”

She looked down at the shattered fragments. The absence of that compulsion felt conspicuous, like the silence after a thunderclap. She shook her head, still a bit stunned. “It wasn't anything like what Palpatine did to me.”

“But you hated what it did to you—to _us_ ," he said. "I'm sure I could've found a way to disable it, but it would have taken time.”

“You just destroyed any data you could have recovered from the Iponu Jedi.”

He nodded. “I know. Your well-being was more important.” He looked her in the eye, holding her gaze with a sincerity that made something twist in her chest. She glanced away.  

He waved a hand over the fragments. “It was lost before we came, and it’s still lost. We—the Jedi, I mean, we’ll still manage. We have so far.”

With the object of her anger destroyed, all her rage, fear and frustration abruptly drained out of her, leaving her feeling tired and hollow. She stumbled around the table and the sunk onto the couch, drawing her feet up and letting her head flop backwards against the back of the seat.

Luke moved around the table and approached her. “Can I sit with you?” he asked.

She looked at up him. It was good to see him clearly again, without the Force compulsion running through her head, though she still felt aroused and strung out. He was just _Luke_ , the same as he’d always been. 

She nodded, and he sat next to her on the couch. At the first tentative brush of his presence through the Force she cringed away, but his mental touch didn’t bring with it any hint of the coercive influence of the holocron.

“It's the just the Force, it doesn't seek to control you,” he said softly.

She took a deep breath and clenched her jaw; reached out through the Force and returned the contact. She could feel his exhaustion as well, proof of the hours of restraining himself, his relief and his concern for her. He scooted closer and she allowed herself to lean into him and sink into the soothing warmth of his Force presence. He tentatively put an arm around her, and when she didn’t flinch away, kissed her temple. Her eyes fell shut with the contact.  

_It was over,_  she thought as she drifted off.

\- -

She jerked awake, disoriented and only conscious that someone was too was too close, but the arm she lashed out was caught easily and pinned back against her.

“Mara,” Luke said softly. “It’s just me. I was going to move you back to your room.”

She relaxed. He had his arms half around her, presumably to lift her from the couch and carry her out of the lounge. She couldn’t have been out for very long. She grunted, rolling away from him and standing, trying to ignore the way her head swam from getting up too quickly. She pushed away a slight tinge of nausea, a side-effect of the pills, no doubt. He straightened as well, stepping back and shoving his hands in his pockets, visibly trying not to appear as though he was hovering, even if he clearly wanted to.

She rolled the stiffness out of her neck as she considered him. He wasn’t wearing his usual serene Jedi expression—his forehead was creased, his face pinched in concern—and even _that_ was attractive. _Ugh_.

Well.

She still wanted him. She wanted him even without the influence of the holocron, wanted to touch and taste him without a kriffing Force-fueled compulsion.

She just wanted _him_.

In spite of days of making his intentions blatantly clear, she knew that he would leave the final step in her hands. It was her choice. 

“Do you—" she began, stumbling over the words. "Want to… again… without the holocron affecting us?”

“Yes,” he breathed, and his expression, wide open and hopeful and wanting, pulled at something deep in her chest. He made it so easy for her. She stepped forward and kissed him, softly and full of promise. His fingers slid up her neck and cupped her face.

“Let's go to bed, Luke,” she whispered.

\- -

Mara woke later to find Luke's arms and legs wrapped around her like a dianoga, his breath steady in her ear as he slept on. Extracting herself from his embrace without disturbing him proved to be a more difficult task than she expected, and it took a few mintues to disentangle herself and put some distance between them. When she'd finally worked herself free, she scooted up to lean against what passed as the headboard of her shipboard bed. 

For all that he spent his time meditating and teaching these days, he'd acquitted himself well in bed without the influence of the holocron. _Very_ well. It shouldn't have been a surprise, she supposed. He must have had lots of experience when he'd been a starfighter pilot in the Rebellion; he probably had dozens of partners of all sexes lined up at his door every night. Her experiences, on the other hand…

"Not that many," he mumbled, still half asleep and muffled by the pillow.

She rapped her knuckles on his skull. "Stay out of my head, Skywalker," she said, almost fondly.

"Ow. You're thinking very loudly," he said, yawning. "Couldn't help it. I didn't sleep with _that_ many people.”

She snorted, amused at his indignation. 

“What does that have to do with your experiences?" He shifted so that he could look up at her.

"It was… different," she said. "Sexual favors were a form of currency in the Imperial Court. It wasn’t about pleasure.” She'd been so young. Back then she believed she was the Emperor’s chosen one, above all the sycophants and court machinations, too clever to be taken advantage of, too savvy not to play the game. She'd been taken for a fool, by older operators who knew the game well, taken over and over—

She bit her lip. It still stung, how her arrogance had blinded her to such obvious manipulation, and her body—especially her body, molded into a tool of violence—had never belonged to her.

After the Empire things hadn't been much better. She'd thrown herself into wild and sometimes dangerous situations trying to chase some sort of sensation in the face of her loneliness and grief. A different loss of control, self-inflicted.

The holocron had stripped her of her control in a different way. The fact that it had brought her to dizzying peaks of pleasure didn’t outstrip the horror of losing that control. When Luke had destroyed the holocron he’d given he’d given it back to her, and she wasn't sure she could ever articulate how much that gift meant to her. 

He sensed her mental turmoil and reached out through the Force, offering himself as an anchor to steady her, guiding her away from the darker recesses of her memory. He propped himself up on an elbow so that he could reach a hand up to cup her cheek, thumb brushing across the cheekbone.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“ _Yes_. I _chose_ _this._ ” She chose him. “I don't want to think about old memories.” Not _here,_ with him. She would not let her old life poison _this_. She’d left that lonely, naive girl behind many years ago.

She sensed that he wasn't satisfied with that, and he wanted to press her, but he held back and she let him feel her gratitude for the gesture. An understanding flowed between them. 

“We can make new memories instead?” he said the proposal like a question, still feeling her out. 

“Really? You went with _that_ line?”  _What was she going to do with him?_

He cut off any further criticism with a kiss, and since he was good at it, she let him. Mara felt as though any hesitation or self-consciousness between them had been burned out of their systems after their frantic coupling under the influence of the holocron; it made accepting his generous gestures of affection so simple; it made her greedy for his touch. 

He caught her by the hips pulled her flat onto the bed, thumbs brushing along her hips bones as he stretched out alongside her. That hungry look was back on his face, but this time it was all him, and not driven by any Force compulsion. She forced herself to lay still; not to squirm under his rapt gaze. He ran a hand over her sternum, between her breasts, and down to trace the edge of her ribcage. Growing impatient, she caught his hand and let their fingers play together for a moment before guiding it lower. He hooked his leg over hers, pinning it between his and spreading her open. She could feel him hardening against her thigh, and she shifted her leg against his cock, smirking as he bit back a curse and pressed his knee down to hold her in place.

The hand between her legs ran in patterns up and down and never where she needed them to be, as his lips pressed gently, softly against her chest, over and over. “Tease,” she whined, and his chuckle vibrated against her collarbone. She tried to thrust her hips up against his hand as he slipped his fingers into her folds, his touch still too light and taunting. Finally he relented and sunk his fingers into her. She moaned as he curled and twisted them, searching and stroking.

“Good?” He was far too pleased with himself. 

_“Yesss,”_ she hissed.

He chuckled again—she was probably going to make him pay for it later—and leaned down again to leave biting kisses all over her breasts, sending little jolts of pleasure through her at the scrape of his teeth. Then she was was thrusting up into his hand, her right heel digging into the bed, her left leg still pinned, writhing as his thumb flicked across her clit. Her hands twisted into the sheets and into his hair and her body bowed as she came, head digging into the pillow, crying out as she shattered under his touch. A string of garbled curses fell from her mouth as she twitched through the aftershocks rippling across her body. 

As the rush subsided, she sank back onto the bed, all warmth and boneless satisfaction, pleasure washing in waves through her. He gently eased his hand out from between her legs and kissed the underside of her jaw. “Luke,” she sighed, and felt a bright spark of delight from him as she said his given name. He beamed at her as she blinked up at him, still hazy with senstaion, as he brought his hand to his mouth. The sight of Luke Skywalker sucking her slick from his fingers was one that she was going to _treasure_. 

When she’d caught her breath she curled into him, her hand playing across his ribcage and then drifting lower—down to wrap around his cock, fingers sliding up and down his length. In between sloppy kisses she whispered, “Do you want my mouth… or my cunt?” 

“Inside… inside you,” he groaned as though he’d lost all sense of coherence at her question. She laughed softly, delighted. He was utterly undone because of _her_ , not some Force compulsion.

She flipped him onto his back—he rolled willingly, trusting her without question—and slid on top of him to position herself over his cock. She paused, taking the time to tease him a little—payback for earlier, and a chance to savor in away she hadn't been able to under the holocron's compulsion—stroking him lightly and running her thumb across the head as his hips made small jerking motions.

He gave her a look, half exasperated, half desperate. “Mara, _please_ ,” he groaned. She grinned at him and sunk down, unable to hold back her own moan as he filled her. He was enthusiastically vocal too, grunting her name and half bitten back curses as she began to ride him. On the edge of her awareness she sensed his intention to flip her onto her back and as he reached for her she wrapped her hands around his wrists and pinned him flat again, shaking her head at him.

“Mara,” he gasped, though he broadcasted his approval of her move loud and clear, his cock twitching inside of her.

“No,” she breathed, delighting in the way his eyes flared at the command.

She continued to rock up and down as she held him there, her movements measured and controlled, relishing the freedom to go at her own pace—a freedom that had been stripped from her under the holocron's influence. He made a final move, twisting and sliding his hands under her hold until their palms were clasped, fingers weaving together, and then she drove him to his climax, his eyes fixed on her face until the last minute when he lost himself in his orgasm.

She touched herself just in time to follow him over the edge. When she came again it wasn’t the heady rush of her earlier orgasm, but a warm ripple that ran up her spine and filled her with heat, just as satisfying in its own way. She allowed herself to collapse down on top of him, her ear against the thrumming beat of his heart, rising and falling as he sucked in deep gulps of air. He disentangled his hand from her loosened hold and wrapped his arms around her. 

“You, always you,” he mumbled.

“You’re still babbling, Skywalker,” she said.

“‘M not,” he said. “I always wanted you.”

Mara didn’t believe him for a second. “Not when I had a blaster to your head.”

“No, I guess not at first. But soon after. I just didn’t know—it never seemed to work out. Even this time, you weren’t going to cross that line—”

“Not in my contract,” she muttered into his neck, and he laughed.

He stroked a hand up and down her arm. “I’m sorry about what happened—how it happened,” he said quietly. “But I’m not sorry it was with you.”

A memory rose in her mind, of him crouched between her legs, gazing up into her eyes as his tongue curled into her. There were moments that she would hold onto in spite of how much she despised the thought of the Force compulsion that had instigated them.

A feeling, heavy like regret, began to seep in. They were done here. She’d be returning him to his Academy as soon as they left the planet. She had a business to run, and obligations to Karrde to keep, and even a fake relationship she was definitely going to end as soon as she got back to Coruscant. 

“No,” he murmured, picking up her thoughts again and tightening his arms around her. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“We have to get cleaned up,” she pulled away, twisting out of his embrace and rising from the bed.

“Mara—”

“After I get cleaned up I’ll fly us back to the city. We still need to check out of our hotel and get clearance to leave the planet…” Not that getting clearance to get anything on this damned planet would be much of an issue. She was simply babbling at this point, she thought with disgust as she dug through a drawer for her underwear.

“I don’t want to end this here,” he insisted, still sitting on the bed, watching sort through her clothes. “We don't have to stop—Mara, you're not listening to me.” His face began to show his irritation. 

She stilled, one hand bunching around a shirt. “What if when _this_ all wears off, it’s not enough?” she said softly.

Even if they weren’t under the holocron’s spell anymore, they’d definitely fallen into bed without thinking through the long-term consequences. When the thrill of kriffing Skywalker had faded, what was there left for her?

“What if it is enough? What if works, Mara?”

His damned _persistence_. Mara ignored his question, gathering up her clothes. “I can drop you off a Yavin on the way to Coruscant—”

“No, don’t route us back to Yavin,” he said, too quickly.

“Why not? It makes sense.” There was something else there, a tension and reticence in his sense, and she wasn't going to let him just slip out of this one.

He sighed, fidgeting with the edge of the sheet. “I've had trouble focusing at the academy,” he began. “Leia thinks I've burnt myself out. She suggested that I take a break, and we—I decided that I would take a sabbatical. Tionne and Kam are handling things for now—but the idea is to stay away from Yavin for a bit.”

“And so you found those files and decided to go hunting for Jedi relics.” It figured _that_ was Luke’s idea of a holiday.

“Yes,” he said. “And I wanted to spend time with you.”  

_Oh_.

“I didn’t come with any expectations,” he added hurriedly. “I just don’t see you very often, and I thought—”

“Luke,” she interrupted, and then wasn’t sure where to continue from there. It was strange to think of him adrift from the Academy that had consumed him for so many years. Adrift, and _available_.

If she wanted him.

“We need to get back to the city,” she repeated before she ducked into the fresher, cutting off any further conversation. When she came out again, he’d returned to his room. She headed for the cockpit and began to warm up the ship for the flight back to Isiru.

\- -

The concierge was only too happy to help out Captain Jade and her “companion” when Mara commed to cancel their reservations. Mara struggled valiantly not to roll her eyes though the entire encounter. They weren’t even charged for their rooms. Likewise, there hadn’t been any fuss when Mara asked for clearance to leave the planet. She left a note for the governor with a promise to send on a report on their expedition to the settlement—though she hadn't a clue how she was going to write up what had happened. 

“Captain Jade?” Mara turned to see the customs agent from their first day on Iponu— _Nakishi,_ that was his name—jogging toward her as she stood at the foot of the _Fire’s_ gangway.

“Is there a problem?” She was under the impression that they’d been cleared to leave.

“No, not at all. I just wanted to say—it was a pleasure to meet you, Captain.” He bobbed his head in a sort of bow, genuine admiration showing on his face.

“Thank you,” was all she could think to say, and it seemed to be enough.

“I hope you enjoyed your stay on Iponu.”

She thought of the expression on Luke’s face as he slid into her, that first time, in the room filled with sunshine and the sounds they made as he fucked her roughly on the floor, looking down at her as though there was nothing else in the world but her.

She blinked the memory away.

“It was… enlightening.”

\- -

She found Luke in the lounge again, fidgeting with a datapad on the table. He looked up at her, a hesitant expression on his face. So it was time for _that_ conversation.

“I have a… proposal for you,” he said. Mara raised her eyebrows as she sat in the seat across from him. “Not like that. Well, actually…”

He slid it across that table to her. She stared down at an employee contract. “It’s only a year-long contract,” he said. “I thought I could stay with you, and spend the rest of my sabbatical working on your crew.” She looked back up at him, her eyebrows turning down in confusion. “Just for the year. It’ll give us time to figure out if this is going to work, between us. Then I have to go back to the Academy, and—and you’re welcome to come with me, of course.”

She frowned at him. “This isn’t just an excuse to have me on hand for training?”

“Of course not!” he protested, and then made a face as he realized she was half joking. It was only too easy. “I mean it, Mara. I want to try to make this work. I’ll take whatever job you need filled.”

She looked at the hopeful expression on his face, and then down at the datapad again. “No.” She slid the datapad back across the table. A look of baffled disappointment washed across his face. “I don’t kriff my subordinates. And I intend to keep on kriffing you.” She looked him steadily in the eye, a smirk growing as a hint of pink tinged his cheeks.

He cocked his head to the side, a smile beginning to spread across his face. “A partnership, then?”

“Hmm,” she said, pretending to think it over. “That could work.”

“I’ll still need to see a contract,” he managed to say with a straight face. Mostly.

She laughed. “Are you sure don’t mind slumming with us lowly traders and smugglers?”

He cocked his head. “I don’t think it’s as self-seving as you always make it out to be. You saved this planet, Mara.”

She offered a noncommittal hum. Even if she still wasn’t completely comfortable with playing the hero, she might have to get used to it; stars knew that Luke would drag her into if he stuck around. 

He shrugged, still smiling. “Anway, Leia told me I needed a change of pace.”

“I don’t think this is what she had in mind,” Mara said dryly. She wasn’t sure what they were going to tell Leia, Lando, Karrde, and the rest. _He_ could tell them. She’d put it in his contract.

“She told me to take some time to figure things out, and I’m _definitely_ looking forward to figuring out what Mara Jade likes in bed.”

Now his smile had an edge that made a shiver prickle up and down her spine. She wasn’t going to let him off that easy but as she opened her mouth to take him to task for his cheek, she was interrupted by the chime that indicated they were free to take off.

That’s our signal,” she said, and hesitated before rising to answer the call. If this was going to work, she had to make space for him in her world. On her ship. It would take time adjusting to that, too. “Would you like to co-pilot?" She usually relied on droids and the autopilot system; it would be a change having anyone—having Luke—as a co-pilot. As a partner. 

His face lit up. “I’d love to.”

As she stood he caught her hand and pulled her into him, his lips teasing hers open, tongue flicking into her mouth.

“Benefits,” he whispered. “To having a partner.”

Those were benefits she could get used to.

 


End file.
